#50DayWellnessChallenge: Zoe Martin’s report

Yesterday, we heard from her significant other. Today, Zoe Martin dishes on how her #50DayWellnessChallenge went down. What does it take to inject a big fat dose of wellness into life? Try something. Try to make it a habit. Invite someone to cheer you on. We’ll kick it off officially again in the fall of 2015. But hey, why wait? It is the New Year, after all. May it be full of great things and good habits! Over to Zoe:

So I received an email from my friend, Lisa Richardson, inviting me to take part in the 50 Day Wellness Challenge for the Winds of Change.

At first I wondered how any challenge I took up could compare with the daily cycle ride (from Pemberton Community Centre to Mount Currie’s Ullus Community Complex and back) that my marathon, triathlon and Ironman competing husband was doing. Then I thought about what challenge would be of benefit to me and that I would be able to stick to. I knew there was no point in saying I would get up at 6am everyday to meditate or that I would do 3 exercise classes a week as I would’ve lasted about 2 days!

I came to the challenge a few days late (about par for the course for me!) and decided that my task would be to drink 2 x 750ml bottles of water every day. (Less than the recommended daily amount but far more than I was drinking pre-challenge.) Not so hard, you might think, but I am originally from the UK and so my go to drink is tea! Even when I have a massage and am told to drink lots of water afterwards I always ask if a tea counts! I don’t know why I have such a hard time but I am just not very good at consuming the stuff that comes out of our taps – sorry, faucets!

Work days were always going to be easier for me as my colleagues were there to nag encourage me by reminding me to drink what I had and by very generously refilling my water bottle for me when it was empty.

But on my days off it was much more difficult to remember to drink, seeing as tea is my beverage of choice and it was easier to drink 4 cups of Tetley than it was to drink 4 glasses of plain old boring H2O! I would usually find myself at the end of the afternoon without having drunk any water at all and then I would have to chug the full quota down in one go. An event that doesn’t make a non-water drinker very happy.

The last 10 – 15 days were the hardest of the challenge for me, in that most days I could only manage 1 x 750ml bottle of water, and that’s if I remembered at all. However, is 750ml not better than the 0ml I was consuming before?

However, once the challenge ended I did find myself continuing to take my water bottle to work, so I guess over the 50 days I did get myself into a routine. I even happily accepted the proffer of a glass of water when I had forgotten my bottle and it is my intention to continue with this new routine year round, not just for 50 days of the challenge.

But now we are in 2015 and I have a new challenge to embrace. I am not going to call it a “resolution” as it’s more of a change in lifestyle, a commitment to getting fitter and finally losing some of those extra pounds – for good.

So, this year Santa brought me a Fitbit for Christmas. One of those new fangled step counting, activity and fitness trackers and my goal is to reach the recommended 10,000 steps a day, along with a reduced calorie intake, to achieve my [lower] target weight.

At first I thought the tracker wasn’t working properly as I was recording around 12,000 steps a day. Then I remembered that I have a dog to walk and short legs and, given that I was on my days off, meant that I was able to take the pooch out for longer. The real eye opener was when I went back to my sedentary desk job and only managed 5,000 steps in a day.

Therefore, in order to achieve the recommended number of steps per day I plan to be more active during the day, with an alarm sounding every few hours to get me away from my computer and out around the block, and by taking the dog out for a walk when I get home from work. So, if you’re going through the village and you see me out and about you’ll know that I’m trying to get my extra steps in. Please feel feel free to wave!

For the New Year I do, however, resolve to read more, to knit more, to keep in contact with my friends more, to eat more meals at the dining table instead of on a tray and to renovate the kitchen with my non-Ironman training and competing husband.

Although I suspect the latter is more about my wellbeing than my wellness!